"Will the love of youth fade beneath the weight of time?"
On the anime screen, the high schooler Hiroto Enami lifted his eyes toward the sky. A colossal planet stretched across the heavens, while passing birds and the warm breath of summer painted the entire scene with a beauty so dazzling it felt almost unreal, like a glimpse of paradise.
And behind him, a girl on a bicycle stood still, quietly watching him.
"When your heart is fixed on someone… have you ever noticed that someone else might be watching you in the same way?"
To accompany the teaser footage, Sora borrowed two famous lines from a classical poem he had known in his previous life. The timing was perfect. In the clip, the grown-up male and female leads met again by the railway crossing. They recognized each other in the same instant, turned back at once -
Only to have their line of sight severed by a train rushing across the tracks.
Then, slowly, the title Five Centimeters per Second appeared on screen.
And Sora's narration stopped there.
But that half-finished feeling, that restrained atmosphere of words left unsaid, fused with the film's fresh, ethereal visual style so seamlessly that it struck straight into the hearts of the audience.
The fans were hooked in an instant.
This image quality.
These storyboards.
This background art.
This composition.
It was unbelievable.
As expected of Kantoku Sora.
The trailer he released for Five Centimeters per Second was, for the most part, built from the same scenes that had appeared in the behind-the-scenes preview, only without the live-action comparison shots and without his voice-over guiding the audience. Everything else was left for the viewers to interpret on their own.
If it had merely been a romance anime with breathtaking visuals, the anime fans across Japan might not have reacted quite so strongly.
But timing was everything.
At that very moment, Re:Zero was airing its most intense stretch, and fans were still immersed in the sweetness of Emilia and Subaru's confession-heavy emotional arc.
Because of that, no one doubted that Five Centimeters per Second would be another sweeping, emotionally rich love story.
And with visuals this beautiful?
Combined with Sora's calm, magnetic narration?
It was already settled.
In the minds of many anime fans, watching Five Centimeters per Second had already become one of the must-do events of summer vacation.
After all, who didn't want to watch another sweet romance from Kantoku Sora, a man practically known for making people fall in love through the screen?
Some were already imagining going to the cinema at night with their partner and turning it into the perfect date.
Inside the company office, Sora scrolled through the flood of praise online, watching comment after comment from anime fans admiring the trailer for Five Centimeters per Second.
A smile slowly surfaced on his face without him even realizing it.
"What are you grinning about over here by yourself?"
Because she had been busy attending conventions and holding fan meet-and-greets, Yumi hadn't come by the office in nearly two weeks.
The moment she walked in and saw the expression on his face, she immediately clicked her tongue and mocked him.
"You know I already released the Five Centimeters per Second trailer, right?"
"Of course I know."
"Then do you know how people online are talking about the movie right now?" Sora asked with a cheerful grin.
"How are they talking about it? That the art looks amazing?"
"That too. But the main thing is that everyone seems convinced it's going to be a sweet romance film."
"A sweet romance?"
Yumi blinked.
Then she remembered the heavy, suffocating feeling she had after reading the script last year.
"…Hah."
"That's why I'm laughing. Once they get into the theater and reach the final scene, the reaction is going to be…"
"Hahahaha!"
The moment she imagined it, Yumi couldn't hold back and burst out laughing herself.
People who had been caught in the rain always seemed to want to snatch away other people's umbrellas.
"Sora, you really are awful. This is straight-up trailer fraud."
"I honestly feel sorry for your fans, falling for a guy like you."
"When it comes to contrast, though, you're a genius."
Sora gave her a strange look. Somehow, it felt like she was insulting him in circles.
Still, he wasn't some born sadist.
The only reason he had deliberately framed Five Centimeters per Second as a warm and tender love story in the trailer was because he wanted the audience to be hit even harder by the emotional whiplash later. If their feelings exploded in the theater, that would naturally bring him a great deal of emotional value in return.
"But seriously," Yumi said as she sat down, crossing her long legs in black stockings beneath her dark skirt and brushing a strand of hair back behind her ear, her eyes still smiling at him, "this movie really is risky. If Japanese anime fans can't handle the contrast in the ending and end up rejecting it as a whole, then your 140 million yen investment could be in real danger. And under those circumstances, you're still messing with the fans like this? Aren't you worried it'll just make things worse?"
Sora paused for a moment before answering.
"So, Yumi… do you think I make anime just for money?"
"Don't you?"
"Not entirely. If money were all I wanted, I could stop right now and do nothing. Once the rest of Re:Zero's profits come in, I'd have more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life."
When she thought about his daily spending habits, Yumi had to admit he was right. For someone sitting on that kind of success, he lived surprisingly simply.
"The reason I didn't choose that," Sora said quietly, "is because there are things I consider more important."
He did not explain further.
But the answer was already clear in his own heart.
To bring the works he had loved into this world, to mend the flaws they once had, and to turn them into true masterpieces within Japan's anime industry - that was what gave him a sense of fulfillment.
"Every choice comes with risk," he continued. "Even if Five Centimeters per Second loses every yen that was invested in it, I still won't regret making it."
In his previous life, Five Centimeters per Second had never been some massive box office hit.
Of course, he had imagined the possibility that in this world it might become the number one film of the summer season.
But he had also considered the opposite outcome with complete seriousness: that it might fail at the box office entirely.
"You're saying that right in front of me, your investor, and you're not worried I'll get angry?"
With both arms folded across her chest, Yumi watched him with amused eyes.
"I'm not," Sora replied. "Because you don't really care that much about profit in and of itself, do you? What you enjoy is the process of investing - of stirring up the anime industry and setting the whole scene in motion. Isn't that right?"
Yumi stared at him for several silent seconds.
"You really have been paying close attention to me."
"We've worked together for more than a year. At this point, it's not that hard to guess what the other person is thinking."
"What a waste that you're single. If you ever start dating someone, you'll probably read a girl's mind with terrifying accuracy."
"Same to you."
After the trailer for Five Centimeters per Second went public, the Qin family's animation division moved in fully. Combined with the 70 million yen Sora had already allocated for promotion, plus the additional budget contributed by the distributor itself, the nationwide advertising campaign officially began.
Across the internet, throughout the television industry, and all over the cinema market, promotion for Five Centimeters per Second launched in full force.
Before the films currently playing in theaters began, there was the usual advertising block.
And now, in many cinema chains across Japan, promotional videos for Five Centimeters per Second were playing alongside trailers for several other summer releases.
In otaku commercial districts in major cities like Tokyo, billboards and posters for Five Centimeters per Second began appearing quietly, one after another.
At anime conventions, special booths were set up specifically to promote the film's July 17 release date.
As for television stations, there was even less subtlety there - they advertised it directly and aggressively.
Among the many films scheduled for the summer season, Five Centimeters per Second might not have had the highest budget.
But when it came to promotional impact, it was unquestionably one of the strongest among its competitors.
Anime fans were already a forgiving and enthusiastic audience to begin with. And on top of that, Sora was currently one of the hottest Kantokus in Japan's anime industry. His track record was spotless. Not a single one of his past works had failed.
The fans' trust in him was naturally immense.
And because of that, within the film industry itself, Five Centimeters per Second was being mentioned more and more frequently by critics and commentators.
Meanwhile, after another two weeks passed, Re:Zero reached episode twenty-two.
With that, the spring season of that year's anime industry was nearing its true conclusion.
There were only three episodes left before Re:Zero's second season would finish airing completely.
And that meant Sora could no longer avoid thinking about what came next.
After Re:Zero, what would his studio's next work be?
Over the course of nearly a full year of broadcast, Re:Zero had brought him close to 180 million emotional points.
That mountain of accumulated emotional value, along with the projected profits still to come from the second season, was the foundation of the confidence Sora now stood on.
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